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Men's basketball: Fan celebrations taking center court this season

With so many upsets in college basketball, there seems to be daily highlights of fans storming the court to celebrate.

No team has separated itself from the pack, and there have been 15 instances when top-five teams in the Associated Press Top 25 poll lost to unranked squads on the road.

That’s led to a lot of postgame mayhem. And Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said it’s not all fun and games when it happens.

His third-ranked Blue Devils have lost on the road to start court-storming celebrations four times this year, including Thursday when his team had to battle through the surge at Virginia. The coach said afterward that fans should celebrate, but the focus should be getting the visiting team off the court first.

“Put yourself in a position with one of our players or coaches,” Krzyzewski said. “I’m not saying anybody did this but the potential is there all the time for a fan to come up to you and say, ‘Coach, you’re a ... .’ Or push you or hit you. What do you do? What if you did something? That would be the story, right? So we deserve that type of protection.”

There had been only seven instances in each of the past two seasons in which AP top-five teams lost to unranked teams on the road. But the past week has shown just how wild this season has been by comparison.

First, No. 5 Miami – ranked No. 2 at the time – lost at Wake Forest last weekend. Then top-ranked Indiana lost at Minnesota on Tuesday. The next night, No. 4 Michigan fell to a Penn State team that was 0-14 in Big Ten play.

And in each of those cases, fans gathered around the edges of the court to count off the final seconds before charging in to celebrate at the sound of the horn.

While BCS conferences typically leave it to host schools to manage postgame celebrations, the Southeastern Conference fines its members when fans storm the court. The fines range from $5,000 for the first offense, $25,000 for the second and $50,000 for a third.

Karl Hicks, the ACC’s senior associate commissioner for men’s basketball, said his league doesn’t allow unauthorized personnel on the court before, during or after the game as a general rule. But the ACC doesn’t have a policy in place to fine or sanction a school if its fans rush the court.

In those moments, the first challenge for the host school is getting the officials and visiting team off the court safely and as quickly as possible.

“We do share best practices between and amongst schools, and advise where appropriate,” Hicks wrote in an email Friday.

Hicks also said he hadn’t received any complaints from Duke on Friday regarding the Virginia postgame rush, which created a bottleneck and stalled the Blue Devils as they tried to get to the tunnel and into the locker room as Cavaliers fans ran in.

Jon Jackson, an associate athletic director for media relations and public affairs at Duke, wrote in an email that the university’s position is that “the safety of the players and coaches should be paramount at any venue.”

He declined to comment when asked whether Duke would file a complaint to the league about anything that happened at Virginia or bring up court storming for discussion at offseason ACC meetings.